In case you haven’t noticed, this blog is coming to you from the Great White North–or, as we call it, Canada. And, if you’re American, you’re probably unaware we’ve just had a federal election to elect a prime minister. Actually, even if you’re Canadian, you might have missed it–for sheer boredom, you really can’t beat Canadian politics.

The same goes for Canadian news. Our morning news reports regularly carry stories about Tazer guns—those guns that deliver an electrical shock, thereby temporarily incapacitating their victim. These stories of Tazer abuse–usually by our friendly neighbourhood police department—fascinate the Texas Twister who is, of course, from Texas, where Tazer guns are probably regarded in the same category as water pistols or wet noodles. A double-barreled shotgun at a school, now that’s a story–or a baby left in the back of a car while mom shops at the mall.

Anyway, the sheer unsexiness of Canadian politics is brought into sharp relief by the crazy shenanigans going on south of the border. Boy, you Americans really show us up. Sarah Palin might be one of the scariest politicians in the world, but she’s also kind of hot. Our hottest politician is probably Justin Trudeau, the offspring of ’70s super-stud PM Pierre Trudeau (the dude whose wife had relations with Mick Jagger), who is kind of a Facebook generation dude. I had to cover the election of the Member of Parliament in my riding, and let me tell you, the aging lefties eating pizza at the Grove Pub was not exactly Saturday night at the Roxy.

Barack Obama, too, is kind of studly—certainly compared to that old croaker McCain. A Seattle cartoonist was passing through town a couple weeks ago, and he told a story about being on the McCain campaign bus—”You get up close to him, and you see all this makeup and all these cracks in his face, he looks like he’s put together, like Frankenstein,” he said of the Republican candidate.

What Canada needs is a really good sex scandal—hell, even a mediocre sex scandal might shake us out of our doldrums. For, after an expense of something like $300 million bucks (Canadian currency, but still) we just elected almost exactly the same gov’t as before. Unfortunately, I don’t think our PM is up for anything approaching a Monica Lewinsky—on his campaign trail one of the photo ops was of him wearing a pale blue sweater and holding a kitten. This, friends, is Canada: animal-loving, unthreatening, and kind of silly. But at least we have Tazers.